A hastily-written musing. Contains spoilers from both the game and the novel. Written while listening to "Alan Turing's Legacy" from the Imitation Game. I highly suggest listening to it.
As usual, Assassin's Creed belongs to Ubisoft.
The love of his parents was sweet, warm, but short-lived. Even now, on the rare times that he thought of them, he recalled nothing but the iron scent of his father's blood and the husk that was his mother's stare.
The memory of Jenny was no better. They were never close to begin with, and the affection between them has always been what Haytham would best describe as 'distant'. At most, there was only a mutual respect between two warriors who were both unfortunate enough to be born Kenway.
He may have loved Birch as a pupil loves his master, perhaps even as a younger brother loves an older one, but that affection soon corroded with the undoing of his treachery. Now, only rancor and venom remains when he thinks of that name.
Holden, he would always mourn for. Perhaps one of the few, if not the only friendship he truly treasured and felt the loss of. Meeting new people, he would always measure them up in terms of Holden's character and strength, and would find them lacking compared to him. Perhaps not for the new initiate though, Shay Cormac. There was a promise in his character, although Haytham was sure he would not see that lad again in a while. Perhaps not ever.
His emotions for Ziio has always been...confusing. There was undoubtedly attraction, more so desire, and especially care for her; but love? He wasn't sure. But one thing was for certain: her death left a hollow mark in him, as if her passing deprived the world with one of the things that made it beautiful still. That made it bearable. Soon, like everything else that has come to pass in his life, she became a distant ache, if a more salient, melancholic one.
His inner circle was something he was once fond of. After all, he did pick them by hand; members from different classes and factions gathered together for a common cause, becoming his eyes and ears—and hands—on that vast colonial cornucopia. But time and mishap weathered down that trust, and he soon found himself weary of each one of them. Weary of his duty. Weary of his life.
And then came the boy, whose eyes mirrored Ziio's in both intensity and depth. And perhaps rage, he noted.
The boy who trumped everything he has worked for—everything he has built.
But the same boy who nudged him awake.
And in being with him, he realized how painful this wakefulness was, and how arduous caring can be. How terrifying love can be.
'Ah, love.'
Haytham sees it in the boy's eyes, just as the boy injects the blade into his own father's neck.
For a moment, he marvels at that Love—the one true thing in the midst if his own darkness.
And as his life drifts from him, he hoped with all his heart that Connor sees it, too, in his eyes.